In sub-surface geological surveying, such as for oil and gas exploration, various approaches are used in an attempt to “see” below ground to help determine what is in the given geological formation before going to the expense of drilling an exploratory well. One such approach is to direct compressional or “P” waves at the geological surface and measure the returns from the waves reflecting off of different materials in the ground. Another related approach is to use shear or “S” waves for this same purpose, which propagate through solids only.
Various difficulties may arise with such approaches when there are obstructions in the geological formation that cause distorted or no signal returns for certain areas within the geological formation. For example, one such obstruction is gas clouds in a geological formation, which may distort or cause anomalies in the signature data returned, and/or make it appear that certain areas (such as oil deposits) are located at the wrong depth in the formation. Thus, even knowing that there is an oil formation beneath a gas cloud, it is still possible that a well being drilled may miss the deposit because of drilling to an incorrect depth. Moreover, there may be other types of obstructions in the formations (e.g., water pockets, basalt, volcanic rock layers, etc.) that may block signal returns altogether in some areas, resulting in incomplete data sets from P or S wave signal collection.
One approach to detecting geologic anomalies is set forth in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2011/0247829 to Dobin et al. This reference discloses a method for identifying a geologic object through cross sections of a geologic data volume. The method includes obtaining a geologic data volume having a set of cross sections. Then, two or more cross sections are selected and a transformation vector is estimated between the cross sections. Based on the transformation vector, a geologic object is identified within the geologic data volume.
Despite the existence of such approaches, further advancements in processing seismic survey data sets for anomaly detection may be desirable in certain applications.